CARDS8037

Request letter from João Manuel de Lima, a local governor, to António Vidal Ferreira Pinto, a priest.

The author asks the addressee to celebrate the matrimony of four of his slaves.

The chaplain of Cururupú (Maranhão, Brazil), the Reverend António Vidal Ferreira Pinto, was denounced in 1813 by an enemy of his, the farmer José Gonçalves Castelhano, for a number of crimes. The defendant was accused of living outrageously under the same roof for more than nine years with Faustina Teresa, the wife of the Lieutenant António dos Reis, and with Maria Benedita, a freed slave, as his concubine. He was also accused of being very slow in the administration of the sacraments, and "a refined dealer." He was believed to give shelter to criminal and exiled men, to abuse women, to open other people's letters in order to discover their secrets, and to ask too much money for celebrating baptisms and matrimonies. The plaintiff also complaint about the theft of his ox, which trespassed the lands of the accused and was killed by him.

At the end of a criminal case that lasted six years, the Reverend António Vidal Ferreira Pinto was found not guilty.

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